1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to coordinating groups of measurements, and more specifically, coordinating heterogeneous measurements from different sources and measurements of the same type from different sources.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software platforms need to be able to collect measurements from data sources providing data in different forms, for example, different types of data, data accessible on different time tables, etc. Some examples of the data sources (protocols, including schemas explaining how data is formatted and organized) providing data to be aggregated and/or coordinated include, for example, routers, voice testers, network analyzers or network probes. The protocols implemented by the data sources include, but are not limited to SNMP (RMON, MIB2, etc.), RTP, XML, SCPI, http, CMIP, LDAP, ODBC, JDBC, etc. These measurements are usually used in a very individual way to troubleshoot specific problems within a single network, such as measurements provided by SNMP Agents. Such troubleshooting includes tests including taking and presenting individual measurements that highlight deviations from expected results. An example of a prevalent system that provides reports on a variety of measurements in a particular domain, such as measurements provided by SNMP Agents, is one by CONCORD COMMUNICATIONS.
However, more recently, there has surfaced a need to perform distributed testing, since many of the problems arising with networks requiring troubleshooting are difficult to pinpoint by individual measurements. Thus, a need exists to be able to coordinate multiple measurements at different places in the network at the same time. Moreover, in order to supplement some of the measurements taken with some products, there is need to include other measurements in an overall test taken by different network equipment, network applications, and network operating systems, that reside on a network at some point. Accordingly, there is a need to be able to tie different types of testing activity together. For example, to be able to schedule and trigger different measurements in concert, and to configure these measurements so that they all get the proper configuration with respect to running the different measurements. Further, there is a need to collect these results of the widely different types of data into a consolidated form in a database. Finally, there is a need to be able to highlight the most important violations or deviations from expectations of measurement results as well as to summarize and present the results of the different measurements together. Accordingly, there is a need for a software platform that can aggregate and/or coordinate different data into a common source.